In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells children – or students, or athletes – how to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development.
A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship. It takes work to communicate accurately and it takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs. It doesn’t mean there is no “they lived happily ever after,” but it’s more like “they worked happily ever after.
In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you’re not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you’re not fulfilling your potential. In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.
As growth-minded leaders, they start with a belief in human potential and development – both their own and other people’s. Instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness, they use it as an engine of growth – for themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole.
Becoming is better than being.” The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way.
To be successful in sports, you need to learn techniques and skills and practice them regularly.
If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?
What allowed me to take that first step, to choose growth and risk rejection? In the fixed mindset, I had needed my blame and bitterness. It made me feel more righteous, powerful, and whole than thinking I was at fault. The growth mindset allowed me to give up the blame and move on. The growth mindset gave me a mother.
Andrew Carnegie once said, “I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.
The students with growth mindset completely took charge of their learning and motivation.
NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.
True self-confidence is “the courage to be open – to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source.
Are there situations where you get stupid – where you disengage your intelligence? Next time you’re in one of those situations, get yourself into a growth mindset – think about learning and improvement, not judgment – and hook it back up.
Yes, he was depressed, but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to cope – with determination.
Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields.
They’d had no interest in proving themselves. They just did what they loved – with tremendous drive and enthusiasm – and it led where it led.
For them it’s not about immediate perfection. It’s about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.
Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation; effort is the key to success.
In the fixed mindset, setbacks label you.